Business Intelligence was developed in the 1980s, from the original 1960s Decision Support Systems (DSS) which had helped businesses to create plans and make decisions. However, BI only achieved international acceptance within industries in the 1990s.

Those within Business Analyst roles will use BI technologies to deliver past, current and predictive insights of services or processes using the available data, and create strategic plans or reports to fulfil the objectives, goals and expectations of their organisation.